Many businesses have recently begun expanding into e-commerce in an effort to attract some of the seemingly endless source of potential buyers. In fact, many new businesses actually offer their products and services solely via e-commerce. Some e-commerce businesses provide traditional transaction methods, wherein the seller offers a specified product at a specified price, and the buyer “buys” the product by performing a required set of tasks acknowledging the formation of a binding buy-sell contract. This occurs at Amazon.com, e.g., which began as an on-line book seller, but has recently expanded into other fields such as music and videos.
Various other business models have also emerged, apparently in an effort to attract a greater portion of the on-line market. For example, Priceline.com uses a model which allows the buyer to present a bid or offer price they wish to pay for a product or service, and a seller then accepts the buyer's offer to enter into a binding contract, typically as the result of a reverse auction process. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207, the contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. VerticalNet.com uses a model which allows businesses to find information regarding manufacturers of specific products, after which time the business (buyer) then contacts the manufacturer directly to purchase the products. Onsale.com and eBay.com use auction models allowing sellers to submit their products to an electronic auction, which buyers then bid on electronically. Onsale.com has also announced an “at-cost” program, claiming to sell various computer and other electronic products at wholesale cost. Other e-commerce companies simply use their websites as an advertising activity to promote their products.
These various e-commerce business models all have certain advantages and disadvantages, but as a fundamental principle of a free market economy such as in the United States, their common goal likely is to attract as many customers as possible, to ultimately lead to more transactions and hence more profit for the companies employing the models. As such, they all seem to focus in one way or another on factors typically considered important by potential buyers—namely price and convenience. None of them, however, allow a potential buyer to engage in a competitive/entertaining collateral price-determining activity (PDA) which ultimately determines the price of the product or service to be secured, depending on the buyer's performance during the collateral activity.
Off-line sweepstakes systems are also known, which allow a game player to win cash or other prizes or credits depending on the player's performance of a specified set of tasks. A simple example involves a player scratching off one of a number of covered areas on a card, to reveal a prize. However, such systems typically do not bind the player to a contract, but merely provide an offer to the player/buyer to enter into a contract on the specified terms.
Systems and methods are thus desirable to allow a potential buyer to engage in competitive/entertaining activities wherein the activities ultimately determine the price of the product or service to be bought, depending on the buyer's performance while participating in the PDA. Such systems and methods using a global communications network such as the Internet would provide buyers and sellers an alternative method of conducting e-commerce.